Starting off my break with a concert

I made it out to Doug’s friday night on my first day of thanksgiving break. Screams of Winter was headlining the show, and 4 other bands were playing. 2 of the bands I havnt seen before were Billions, and Green Shadows-White Whales. Both blew me away. Billions was a mix between Muse and Dillenger Escape Plan, and i am really looking forward to seeing them perform again. GSWW ive known about for a long time, i just never had a chance to see them live. They are an experimental progressive indie band. They reminded me a lot of the clean parts on Between The Buried and Me albums, which is good cause they are my favorite band. They lacked a vocalist tho which killed it for me. I got bored half way through there set, and i feel like if they had vocals, it would have kept me engaged the entire show. Their guitarist was absolutely amazing.

Billions

Green Shadows White Whales

*All images copyright Brad Meyer

10 second portraits

I’ve had this idea cooking up in my head ever since the beginning of summer. I wanted to take portraits of people using a ridiculously long exposure, like over 10 seconds, and add in a strobe  somewhere. So i would open the shutter, flash my subjects, and have them run out of the frame as soon as the strobe went off, and let the camera sit on the tripod still recording the background behind them. In my head it would make the people look translucent and whatever texture was behind them would show through their skin. Well i needed to come up with something for my photo class that incorporated natural and artificial light and decided now was the time to try it. It pretty much worked out how I envisioned it, creating a ghost/reflection like effect. Hopefully my photo professor likes it and doesn’t think it is boring/cliche/hokey.

*Images copyright Brad Meyer

First Basketball game of the season…. finally

Friday night I shot the first actual basketball game of the season that wasnt exhibition. I got to the game 3 hours early in hopes to set up a remote camera behind one of the backboards, but one of the Sports Information Directors said no. Not because i couldnt, but because she didnt want to actually do her job and find me someone to get a ladder. I hate SIDS. So instead i put the remote camera in front of me and shot really wide along with my long lens. The Illini crushed SIUE, a lot of good shots our side. Also we have 2 new freshman on the team who are really good, one even broke a record for most points for a starting freshman. Also, this was my first game shooting full frame, and it was amazing. my 70-200mm lens was the perfect length. I cant wait to shoot more games this year, I have high hopes that we are really good. Check out more photos from the game at the Audio Slideshow from the DI here.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer and the Daily Illini

Big Pimpin’ in the CU

Hip hop star Jay-Z came to Assembly Hall tonight for a concert. It was the biggest concert put on this semester at A-Hall, and was probably one of the most energetic. There were a bunch of other photographers that showed up, most of which i had no idea how they got credentialed. Some were from high schools and all of them except for Dean and I had cheap bodies with kit lenses. It wasnt the most ideal concert to shoot, we were crammed right up to the edge of the stage and could only shoot for the first 2 songs instead of the standard 3. I did however walk away with one shot that i really like, which is the horizontal one.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer and the Assembly Hall

Star Trails

Sorry for the lack of updates, its been way to long. Having 3 jobs and being a full time student really eats up all my time and its hard to get to posting on here. Any ways I now have a ton of free time (midterm hell season is over) and I will update this a lot more frequently. Last night Ned and I went out a couple miles south of campus to do some star trails, which i have never done before but Ned is a big fan. The first one was 50 minutes long, and my least favorite due to the huge amount of wins-flare caused by the headlights of passing cars and the slight amount of cloud that passed through. The second one was around 25 minutes and my favorite of the two. I wish i would have gotten the axis of the earths orbit in it, but that will be for another day. Growing up in the suburbs my entire life, i had no idea how many stars there actually are in the sky. It amazed me when we went out only a few miles from campus how many showed up. And i know we were still getting some light pollution.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer

Saving Abel/BuckCherry Show

Im now the official photographer for Assembly Hall here on campus, and last night i had to shoot Saving Abel and BuckCherry. I was looking forward to this because they were on the harder side of the spectrum in music, but still not my taste. Saving abel had no light at all during their show. My 5d2 struggled through out their set. BuckCherry’s set was a lot better and they had a lot more light, to much light actually. The singer was pretty pale and i kept over exposing his skin, or else the rest of the stage and everyone else would be underexposed. The guitarist for them also is a photographer and shoots with a leica M7 and we got to talking for a bit. He gave me his email so we could continue our conversation.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer and the Assembly Hall

Rosaline Show and Promos

I made it home last weekend to shoot some promos and live shots for Rosaline. They wanted me to use a fisheye, which was kind of interesting, it was my first time using one on a fully frame camera. The shoot went terrible, i had 3 bad cables in my bag, and they would only fire my strobe when ever they felt like it. but i did get some alright photos out of it. They were good live, but it sucked that they had to play first and only have a 20 minute set.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer

protest/rally/vigil thing

Sorry for the lack of updates, been really busy shooting almost every day. Yesterday as i was leaving my last class i get a call from Ned telling me i needed to be in downtown champaign at that very moment. I told him my camera was busy doing my homework (firing remotely via my computer off my balcony). He told me to grab his and run down there. After grabbing his nikon (yuck) i rode my bike to the down town and couldnt find anything there. Turns out i needed to go to downtown urbana and Ned told me the wrong city. So i had to ride my bike to my car and then drive to the rally. I made it to the rally, which was about the health care system, and only had a couple minutes to shoot because i had to make it back to my apartment to continue my homework. I got a decent image i think, its hard to make protest look visually interesting when there isnt any tear gas around that was thrown by riot police. Also Nikon cameras suck and pretty much everything on them is backwards to my canon. Also, i felt out numbered at this rally, everyone was liberal.

*Image copyright Brad Meyer and the Daily Illini

What i wake up to now

Granted this is taken at night, but this is the view from my new apartment on campus.

*All images copyright Brad Meyer

My first, and hopefully not last, Cubs game.

When i went to orientation for the Daily Herald, the photo editors told me and one of the other interns that it was possible for us to make it out to a couple cubs games this summer. They normally dont send staffers to any sport events anymore because they dont want to have to pay for photos they can just pull off of AP. But because i was unpaid, they didnt have much of a problem. I patiently waited the whole summer for the opportunity to arrise, and towards the end i realized i would have to start asking (constantly) if i could make it out. My photo editor agreed that he would do his best to get me out there, and after looking at the schedule, the best time for me to shoot was my last day with them, and at home in the suburbs in general. When i got the Wrigley, i had no idea where to go, and i found another photog and asked him. It turns out it was Phil Velasquez from The Chicago Tribune. He was a really nice guy and showed me around Wrigley and wished me luck. I got to the first base photo well 2 hours before the game started to ensure a good spot to shoot from. Crowd Management, as they are called, kept on asking to see my photo pass, most likely because not to many 19 year olds sit in photo well, and it got kind of annoying, but i guess im going to be getting that for a few more years. There were only 6 other photographers there, which is not that much from what i was expecting, and halfway through i switched sides and shot from the third base well. Being a Cubs fan, i was hoping for a great game and the W flag to fly over Wrigley, but that was not the case. The Cubs lost to the Phillies, and there was hardly any great action plays that happened, and the few that did either the umpires or  base coaches got in my way. Also, I really wished i had a 1d mark II(I), the 5d is just way to slow in the fps department for baseball, and the autofocus is not the fastest to catch those quick plays. All in all it was a great expeirence and it made the Herald internship worth it in the end, and i cant wait to be sitting back in those photo wells (hopefully with my own 300mm 2.8 and a mark III).

*All images copyright Brad Meyer and the Daily Herald